Rob Roy
A young Englishman is sent to Scotland to rescue his father's business and stumbles into a Jacobite world of cattle raiders, informers and a man known as Rob Roy. Scott sets the novel just before the 1715 rising and lets the politics arrive through conversation rather than exposition.
Diana Vernon is one of his best creations: witty, secretive and far more competent than the hero. The novel is also a portrait of a border economy in transition, where cattle and credit matter more than flags. It has the usual Scott weaknesses, a slow start and a passive narrator, and the usual Scott virtue, a world that feels lived in.
Public-domain status
First published in 1817. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Walter Scott died in 1832, so this work has been free to republish there since 1903.
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